The meaning of 'captain'
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Tezuka remembers about the inspiration that Yamato-buchou gave him.


**Fandom: Prince of Tennis / Tennis no Oujisama  
Title: The meaning of 'captain'  
Pairing: Yamato + Tezuka, Tezuka + Ryouma  
Rating: PG-13  
Description: Tezuka remembers about the inspiration that Yamato-buchou gave him****.**

**Disclaimer: Tennis no Oujisama isn****'****t Yui****'****s.  
**  
He should have let well enough alone.  
And then, maybe I could have lived the rest of my life (or at least the part associated with him), in peace.

Then again, everyone says that…  
…especially when they're unable to say goodbye or let go of the past.

**The meaning of ****'****captain****'****  
By miyamoto yui  
**  
_When I first tried out for the team as a freshman, they looked at me with a skeptical attitude that permeated into all their looks, feelings, and performances. I watched them so carefully, still having not comprehended the ability to believe in my own abilities. I was living on the desperation of my talent and love for the game, but never really truly understanding what it meant to be a player.  
I didn__'__t know that until he came onto the courts. He walked onto the main court and opened the fenced gate with his hand._

_His hand stayed on the door while the other one went on his hip with his Seigaku jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape. He didn__'__t look intimidating, but what respect they gave him.  
From one corner to the other, there was a complete silence. It almost seemed like a god had come onto our high school__'__s tennis courts._

_Maybe that was partly true._

_But I didn__'__t know what this meant. I knew how to be polite and to respect other people, but my respect for our captain was still not as much as the other people around me, who were much older than me. I was the only freshman.  
He just nodded his head as a small smile came to his lips. His eyes seemed to gaze around, but you couldn__'__t tell that he was because of his sunglasses. You could only tell when he turned his head a little from side to side._

_Those sunglasses drove me up the wall.  
My stoical attitude didn__'__t amount to much if you saw how those sunglasses made me go crazy with frustration. I didn__'__t show it, but I felt it whenever I played him._

_But that wasn__'__t just limited to the green spaces with their painted white lines__…_

_After one sempai hit my elbow, I wanted to quit the team. Syuichirou didn__'__t want me to. That made me stop to think more about the most difficult decision I had ever had at that point in my life. And then the captain told me not to. Just because people like that did that to you, did that mean you were to give up?  
No. That just meant that you had to kick their asses later at their own game.__"__Become the pillar of Seigaku__."_

_Later on that week, he and I played a match. Evening was approaching and he threw up the ball._

_Thwack, thwack, thwack__…_

_As we sat side by side with our backs on the fences of the courts, we huffed and puffed while wiping our faces with white towels. We both drank from our water bottles.  
He finished faster than me. Looking up to the sky, he asked, _

_"__Let me ask you. Why would you make such a rash decision? You don__'__t seem the type.__"__  
I took my lips off the straw and looked at the fence on the other side of the court to avoid gazing at him. It was partly in embarrassment and some of it was in shame. __ "__It was on principle. They didn__'__t even respect me as a human being.__"__  
__"__I do understand your point, don__'__t get me wrong. I__'__m just saying that it__'__s harder to live through things that aren__'__t fair. It__'__s always easy to give up.__"__ He put his hand gently on my head, but he was still looking at the stars up in that clear, dark violet sky. __ "__Can you give up something you love so easily?__"_

_There was silence._

_As I was about to open my mouth to answer, he took off his hand from my head and put it under my chin to tilt my head so that my eyes would look up to the burning balls of gas shining brightly above us. _

_"__How will you ever reach what__'__s up there if you keep on looking at what__'__s in front of you?__"_

_At that, he took of his hand from my chin and I continued to stare up at the sky. Only for a moment did I depend on his hand to keep my head balanced and steady, but when he let go, I knew I had to do it on my own.  
He walked away quietly and when I finally turned my head to look at him, his jacket was waving in back of him._

_I was simply awed. _

_That was the day I began to understand what they were all saying about the captain through their silence whenever he came into the courts...  
__**  
+/+/+/+/+/**_

_The sempais who were talking about me when I first joined and thought that I was being arrogant about my left-hand playing, they were whispering about different things around me. And even though I tried to ignore them, because I knew the truth behind all the rumors, I couldn__'__t but help but feel annoyed. The whispers wouldn't stop.  
They were the kind that when you came into a room, an awkward silence would immediately follow. It wasn__'__t the air of respect, but one of disrespect. Of course, I was terrible at showing how angry I was. That energy came out in the courts as __"__passion__"__._

_But what did passion really mean?_

_If I asked the captain such a stupid question, would he laugh at me? Would he re-evaluate what he thought about me and take back what he said when he asked me to become the __"__pillar of Seigaku__"__?_

_As I retied my shoelaces in the locker room, I sighed. I looked at my shoes and then I leaned back onto the wall.  
There was no one there anyway. And no one would be there for a while._

_I needed time to breathe._

_In between studying at home, tennis practice, and keeping up my guard all the time, I was exhausted both mentally and physically. On top of that, there was no one to trust._

_He didn__'__t let allow me to be this way, though. He didn__'__t leave me alone._

_Click. The door opened and I turned my head to my left side to look up and see him there in the doorway. I thought he was with the coach and wouldn__'__t be here for a while, just enough time for me to avoid him._

_Those rumors did things to me. I couldn__'__t look up to the captain without freezing up inside. But when people gave you suggestions, it was only natural that you thought about them__…_

_But that night, I had a dream about him kissing me. I just couldn__'__t understand if I was more appalled, disgusted, accepting, scared, or all of the above._

_Interrupting my thoughts, he suddenly asked with a smile, __"__Want to play a match with me, Tezuka-kun?__"_

_Unable to say no because I admired him too much, I found myself on the courts before I could protest that maybe I should have been heading home. I watched him and how he played and the rumors were soon forgotten.  
I was immersed at how well he played. Even though he complimented me at the end of the game, the only thing I could do was bow my head humbly and say, _

_"__Thank you, but I still have a lot to learn.__"__  
__"__But what is it that you want to ask me, Tezuka-kun?__" __he asked me as he changed in the locker room._

_I took off my shirt a second slower than usual so that he couldn__'__t tell how shocked I was when my eyes slightly opened widely. __"__How did he know?__"__ I thought to myself.  
I thought that I kept my feelings inside of me so well hidden that no one could tell. But how could he have seen through me?_

_I didn__'__t like how perceptive he was through those sunglasses of his._

_Putting my shirt, I placed my glasses on my face once more. I looked at him again, but this time, I was looking into his eyes. He didn__'__t have his sunglasses on._

_He was staring straight at me with his bag over his shoulder. He pressed, __"__I could tell while you were playing. What is it you__'__d like to ask me?__"__  
I took up my bag and said, __"__What do you play for, Yamato-buchou?__"_

_My hands couldn__'__t pick up my bag, though. I held onto to the strap with both of my hands unable to lift it up. _

_But my eyes looked deeply into his. I had to know._

_"Do you love to play tennis?__"__ He put down his bag on the bench, but he stood there looking into my eyes wanting an answer that was still trying to find itself within me.  
"Yes, I do,__"__ I found myself answering with an embarrassed smile on my face as I looked down at the floor._

_Tennis was everything to me. It justified all the sacrifices because it gave me so much happiness to be on the court knowing that I did this all by myself. It was the one thing that didn__'__t require me to be the best student in my class, the dutiful son__._

_I chose it. I chose to be here._

_"__Then why are you asking me if our answers are the same?__"_

_My eyes focused on him once more. The grip on the strap of my bag became tighter.  
Then, he asked, __"__You__'__re depending too much on it, Tezuka-kun.__"__  
"What?__"__ I almost thought that I didn__'__t hear what he said correctly._

_In surprise, I let go of the strap as if it were a dead weight._

_"__That__'__s not love. Love is believing, not desperation.__" __He began to walk over to me.  
I took a step backwards, but he stood in front of me. I looked up to him as he looked down at me._

_Those eyes__…__  
were so overwhelming__…_

_I almost wished he was wearing his sunglasses so that I wouldn__'__t have had to watch him__.__"__I play because I want to become stronger. I need to become stronger,__"__ he told me with a glint of sorrow.  
The all-powerful captain wasn__'__t as calm as everyone perceived him to be._

_Even I thought he couldn__'__t have been this way. The captain never showed any kind of weaknesses__._

_"Why do you need to become stronger?__"__  
"Because how can I protect the one thing I love most in the world if I don__'__t know everything about it? It__'__s useless to say you love something when you don__'__t even know how you__'__re going about trying to understand it.__"_

_Then, he turned around to get his bag. It almost seemed as if he was angry when his back turned away from me. And he was. When his eyes glanced at me, he said,  
__"__If you can__'__t understand that, Tezuka-kun, don__'__t come back here.__"_

_The door closed before I coughed. My body told me I stopped breathing. It was reminding me that I needed to breathe in order to live._

_My heart felt so hard that I didn__'__t know if it was even there. His words ran through my head over and over as my eyes blankly watched the motionless door that had already closed before me._

_I didn__'__t go to practice for a couple of days. In fact, I avoided it all together. I practiced for hours at another place, unable to stop myself from doing tennis all together. After all, when you were used to a routine, it was hard to break a habit._

_A habit__. __Was that it all came to?_

_Pwack!  
The last ball served hit the fence behind me._

_Was that what he meant? Was I doing this out of being so used to it that I had mistaken it for loving the game? But I did. I really did love the game._

_But what was desperation? Did I really depend on tennis too much to define who I was and what I did? He was right__._

_Thwack.  
Another ball came towards me and I hit it._

_Another after another, I hit the balls without worrying if I did something incorrectly. As long as I was having fun, that was all that mattered._

_That night, I found the captain coming out of the school entrance. He was about to go past me, but I stood in front of him. I bowed before him. _

_"__Please play a match with me, Yamato-buchou!__"__  
__"__Why? It__'__s useless to play someone who__'__s mechanical.__"__  
I could feel the coldness of his eyes on me._

_I couldn__'__t stand it__. __I admired him so much__!_

_The one person I truly trusted enough to show my feelings to__…_

_His eyes looked at all the cuts around my arms, legs, and fingers. They found their way to my face._

_Then, I found myself shouting, __"__I__'__m not a machine! I am Tezuka Kunimitsu!__"_

_Why__…__  
Why doesn__'__t anyone ever think that I have feelings?_

_I didn__'__t want to cry even though tears wanted to come out of my eyes. They were my pent up feelings coming out._

_It was tiring to be one of the top students. It was exhausting being the obedient, disciplined son__. __I was tired__._

_This was the only thing I was truly good at, and it was with no one__'__s help. But in order to get through that next hurdle, which was more difficult than all the others before this one, I had to get through him._

_At that moment, he dropped his bag to wrap his arms around my shoulders. _

_"__It__'__s all right, Tezuka-kun__."  
My hands bunched into fists, still unable to fully depend on someone when I was so used to taking it all by myself.  
"I can see that you__'__ve grown in just a few days.__"__  
__"__But I need to play you, Yamato-buchou__."__ I desperately told him, on the brink of crying.  
He shook his head. __"__No, Tezuka__…__I__'__m trying to tell you that your worth isn__'__t limited to tennis.__"_

_His hug became firmer as he gently told me, __"__That__'__s why I picked you to be the pillar of Seigaku. Of all the people here, you__'__re the one who is not only determined, but I knew you had the potential. I believe you can lead us to victory. Not because of your skill__…__  
__"…__but because I saw that you could lead them to believe in themselves. Inspire them to become better players, but more so in becoming the people they want to become.__"_

_The captain smiled at me. _

_"__When you do everything you__'__re told to, that__'__s all you ever amount to. A suave person can do that. That__'__s not what anyone needs to hear. What people need is someone that cares. A person that cares will guide them. And inspiration will follow.  
__"__The inspiration to be one__'__s best.__"_

_The grip I had on my bag was lost. Plop._

_My hands lifted up to hug him back.  
_

_**+/+/+/+/+/**_

_From then on, we became best friends. After practice, he sometimes gave me stuff. We didn__'__t hang out very much but whenever I needed advice, he was always there.  
But as more and more time passed by, I was growing up. And soon, I had to face the fact that he was graduating._

_That he would no longer be with me._

_On the day before he was graduating, we had one last match. We went all out, but it was on this day that I truly beat him. He smiled as we came to the middle of the court with the net separating us._

_Yamato-buchou held his hand out to shake mine. I lifted my hand up to shake it.  
_

_"__You finally beat me, Tezuka.__"__  
I shook my head. __"__Thank you for letting me have this match with you, Yamato-buchou.__"__  
The grip on my hand became a bit tighter. Then, it finally let go._

_He began to laugh as we headed over to the locker room. _

_"__You__'__re so different from the freshman I first saw playing for a position as a regular.__"__  
I nodded my head. __"__That__'__s because you led me to where I needed to go.__"_

_We changed in silence._

_And then, I turned to him, but he kept his back towards me even though he wasn__'__t moving._

_Without any sense of embarrassment, I directly questioned, __"__How do I ever repay that? What did you ever learn from me? What could you have ever needed me for, Yamato-buchou?__"_

_Turning around, he smiled and I was looking into his clear eyes once more. He walked towards me and stood in front of me._

_He didn__'__t touch me at all, not even to hug me. That disappointed me__._

_The captain just continued to stare at me, but then, he sighed._

_"__Tezuka__…"__ he began to say. He reached out his hand to me and put his hand on the top of my head. His fingers touched my hair._

_There was a long pause before he said to me, __"__Without you Tezuka, I wouldn__'__t have realized how much I loved tennis.__"__  
"I don__'__t understand, Buchou__."__  
__"__The day I told you the difference between desperation and belief, I was also talking to myself. Because you looked up to me more as to who I was than what I did, I was a little confused about my role as captain.__" __He leaned his face closer towards me that I felt his breath. The captain smiled at me while looking even deeper into my eyes. __"__You taught me what it really meant to be a captain, Tezuka. That__'__s what you__'__ve done.__"_

_For a moment longer, we stared at one another._

_It was as if he wanted to tell me more__…__  
__…__but I would never know._

_He took his hand away and I felt the warmth of his touch dissipate. Without looking back, he took up his bag and left me there with my chest crunching and my mind thinking too many things without being able to salvage anything._

_I knew that I would miss him when he left. But until he went away, I didn__'__t realize how much I loved this person. Until he was gone, I didn__'__t know that I loved him so much._

_Being the way I was though, I wouldn__'__t have been able to tell him though._

That's why when I found myself in the locker room with Echizen looking at me with his unwavering gaze at me, wanting an answer, I finally understood what Yamato-buchou was telling me through all the time he was my captain.  
I was holding onto the top of his head after pushing his white cap aside. It fell onto the ground as we were looking intensely at one another.

Looking at his confident eyes towards me, I became aware of how truly imperfect I was, how I had much more to learn about believing in myself, even with all my training and self-confidence.

In the end, I didn't know anything at all. Except that I fell more and more in love with the game of tennis…

…because of the person in front of me.

But that line was becoming blurry. Falling deeper and deeper into both.

I was beginning to become unable to see one without the other.  
**  
Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note: **It's been a short time since I've done a new fic and even though I was working on two other ones, an idea popped into my head. * laughs * Isn't that the usual thing for every writer? Well, I've liked this pairing since I saw one (yes, just ONE) dj pic of Yamato-buchou kissing a freshman Tezuka.  
**  
Saturday, June 19, 2004**


End file.
